Published on April 26, 2024
Written by Will James, Sydney Brownstone, and Esme Jimenez as part of the series “Lost Patients” for KUOW, an NPR Station.
Edward Moore, a 32-year-old sailor, was discovered, near freezing and living in a tattered tent on the shore near current day Seattle in 1854. At the time, Washington was still a territory and Seattle was a misty settlement of log cabins and wood-framed homes at the edge of the known world.
“He’d been living in his makeshift tent for months, living off raw shellfish he foraged and being cared for after a fashion by the Coast Salish people who lived nearby,” explained Josephine Ensign, a University of Washington nursing professor, and the author of “Skid Road,” which documents the history of homelessness in Seattle.
“He most likely had PTSD from a really, really bad shipwreck and maybe also potentially some traumas from his childhood back in Massachusetts,” Ensign said. “It does seem like he had schizophrenia or some type of psychosis.”
After having several of his frost-bitten toes amputated with an axe, Moore was taken to a doctor at Fort Steilacoom, which would later become Western State Hospital.
But when the bill came due for Moore’s care, Washington lawmakers balked. They didn’t want to set a precedent that would require the territory to care for the growing number of poor and ill sailors who were ending up on its rugged shores.
They decided Moore’s care was the responsibility of the county, not the territory, and shipped him back to Seattle by canoe. After he returned, Seattleites decided the best thing to do was to send Moore back to Massachusetts.
“Townspeople took a collection to buy him a new pair of clothes, paid a ship’s captain, and shipped him off,” Ensign said.
Continue reading at KUOW.
Josephine Ensign, a University of Washington nursing professor, and the author of “Skid Road,” which documents the history of homelessness and mental health in Seattle and how it relates to today's patchwork system of services.